Back for a rare appearance of motivation
I swear I have a good excuse--I got a job! That's good, right? After a certain point, waking up everyday and having lazy morningafternooons (that is not a typo, that is to refer to the kinds of days where you wake up not too late but you still find yourself lounging in your pyjamas) got boring for me. And, yes, I know there are those of you saying that that is why I created this blog in the first place, to not have days like that, to having something to keep me going and out of the house, but both the scorching heat and the scarce sit-in-a-café-and-write-on-your-mac culture alas prevented me from being as productive as I wanted to be.
That, actually, in and of itself is a rather Dubai-esque experience. I have found that in my nearly three months here: introductions to anything, whether it be a restaurant, an administrative building, or a business venture, with great positivity and hospitality (something familiar from my American upbringing) and yet after a bit of time lapsing, you find things actually happen in a more European/Roman descended/ Mediterranean kind of way and pan out in a much slower way. Maybe there are a few false starts (I hate to give a kind of #firstworldproblems kind of example, but it took one place five times, I kid you not, to get my business cards right), but add the back and forth, the (in my case) lack of a car and staunch refusal to have one, the heat, and the fact that it seems that everyone always expects you to dress up as if you are going to a business meeting, despite being a booming and growing metropolis, Dubai also has this small town kind of rhythm. So voilà my excuse for taking so long with this one.
I also must admit that I am getting used to life here, so experiences I am having that may have seemed unusual and share-worthy in the beginning are slowly becoming banal and thus I have less of a desire to put them up here as after a few minutes of thought, I usually end up saying to myself "who would want to read about that?" There is also the added complication that while I have had certain experiences that at the time I thought were, and still do consider to be, something that would interest you faithful readers, I was not quite sure, nor am I still, if I could photograph such a scene.
Notably, when I went to the police station to have my visa status changed from tourist to worker, I had one such experience. First of all, the fact that I could even simply go to the police station to do so, and not have to leave the territory, is something that merits being discussed. As I mentioned on my post about the "visa run" to Oman, after 30 days on a tourist visa, visitors have to leave the country; these individuals can simply turn right back around and come back in, unlike in Europe or the US, usually with no questions asked. The same procedure goes for those who want to change their visa status from visitor to worker/ professional. The only exceptions to this rule are if your company (usually a gi-normous kind of corporation, firm, or whatever other kind of monstrosity for which I'd likely never work) is big enough to handle everything (indeed, one of the upsides) or if you hail from certain countries such as several in Europe or the United States, that exempt you from one last visa-run and give you the pleasure of a trip to the police station to change it there.
After going through very similar process for the past six years in France, jumping through kind of administrative hoop doesn't phase me. You want passport photos, I'll give you passport photos? What format? The weird American one? The deer-in-headlights French one? I'm also a pro at taking a ticket from one of those little machines and waiting...for hours. What I had never encountered before, however, are typing centers, fees and all the things that go along with it. While English is ubiquitous here, lest we forget that Arabic is after all the official language, so any such documentation needs to be translated at an official center called a typing center.
So, rather than going in with a huge long list of documents, a folder about the size of a suitcase (that of course the on call civil servant frowns at, and with his or her x-ray vision, tells you that you clearly don't have the right ones), getting a ticket (around number 95), glancing at the screen (who shows number 5), and waiting for hours before your fate for the next year is determined...in Dubai, you arrive, the crowds construction workers and other laborers renewing their visas (nationals of any country can renew within the UAE so long as they don't change their status) split in two as if my gender, age and passport were Moses splitting the Red Sea, and without even having to get a ticket, I can stroll right up to the counter and explain my situation, sans frowns and bureaucratic judgment. So far so good. The man behind the desk, clad in military garb, asks for some basic information about me, why I am here, to see my passport, etc. He nods with each response and types away at his computer. Since he seems to be functioning as both an information desk and a visa dispatcher, every few minutes he is interrupted by people asking for where counter X is or, what they should do to get their husband's, child's, nanny's or drivers (this is Dubai, afterall) visa.
We finally get through getting all of my information into the system and he writes down a number with his pen (very official, I think) in my passport. He explains that I need to take several documents (essentially everything he has typed up) to the typing center, where they will do so in Arabic and do something else official that I still fail to understand, pay the 700 dirham processing fee (about 190 dollars--still cheaper than a visa run) and come back to him with the receipt and the new documents. Fine, I think--this kind of back and forth is exactly what I had to do in France, so I felt comfortable doing it UAE style.
The typing center is located across from the police station. Like other administrative centers, I am thrilled that there is a female-only entrance (and thus female only line), which means I will be out of there even sooner than expected. I walk in and find myself towering over a young Indian woman getting a visa renewal for her entire family, and a filipino maid with her employer. As those two women were waiting (no numbers or screens here, just waiting) for their requests to be effectuated, I had the man at the counter my documents and start to explain my situation. Before I can even finish, he interrupts me with a, "yes ma'am" and asks me to pay 800 Dirham. I ask about the price difference and he explains that the 700 AED is for the government, whereas the 100 AED is for the typing center (even though this is a government issued typing center...). I gave him several bills which to me still feel like Monopoly money because of their high number and color, as well, though more reluctantly so, my passport. I admittedly was slightly nervous to do so because I could see that once customers bequeathed their documents and precious national identification to the receptionist, there was no special order or organisation. The men simply just put them on a table in the center of the L-shaped room (the horizontal part being reserved for women, the vertical for men) from which typers on the other side would pick up random piles of passports and papers (not at all on a first-come-first-serve basis) and complete the necessary task). So, pay the extra price? Fine. Relinquish one's only form of legitimate identity for who knows how long? Ok. Both of those actually seemed reasonable to me, a seasoned-visa requestor.
What surprised me, and what has been the build up of this entire (likely boring up to this point) entry, is the fact that only once I was finally able to just wait a few minutes while my renewal was being typed up, I began to notice a familiar smell that I had not experience in several months: swiveling kebab meat. I glanced in the direction of this odor,and sure enough in the VERY SAME establishment, there was a full on donor kebab stand (it was indeed indoor, but saying restaurant seems far too fancy for this kind of place)--for those of you that know Paris, imagine those in the quagmire of streets at St. Michel. Yes, of all the strange things I have encountered throughout my ex-pat life, this is probably the most peculiar. A kebab while waiting to get your visa request typed up? I began to ask myself questions like, if the typing center is government run, is the kebab stand, too? Or do civil servants get some kind of a discount? I suppose these are the questions that come to mind when you are trying to wrap you head around the little idiosyncrasies of different countries. I so badly wanted to take a picture, but then another question popped into my mind: as a government building, at least the typing center part, did I have the right to do so? Let alone, how would it look for a pale, white Western woman to take pictures of a room mostly populated by men from the UAE, India and Pakistan...and at a kebab stand. I opted not to.
A man walked into the ladies entrance, and my Indian and Filipino neighbors promptly shooed him away, interrupting my kebab-why-and-how thought process. Fortunately, my passport was one of the lucky ones to not be buried by a plethora of other requests and my official English/Arabic extension request was completed.
As I walked back towards the police station to finalize the renewal, I read on the paper that I was an unmarried, Christian who went to university. Yes, true, but none of these questions were the ones that the original visa agent asked me. Assumptions like this, however correct, also don't surprise me after a few months in Dubai. They like to put people into categories here.
I gave the final documents to the same visa agent as before who was already attending to someone, but like the little interruptions he did onto me when I had been there earlier that morning, he stopped everything with his new client to finalize my request. He took all of my documents and my reciept of payment (which he confirmed was indeed 800 AED and not 700) and put them on a table behind him that was even less organized than the one in the typing center. I thought to myself how the civil servants in France that handed my visas over the years would react to this: no multicolored folders with different degrees of thickness to classify everything? No passport photo and proof of housing with every document? Quelle horreur. He finally printed a new document saying that my visa was extended for another month--this relieved me as those random numbers written by ball-point pen before didn't really reassure me--and I was free to go.
As much as I grew to love the visa renewal olympics in Europe, and as great as the Oman run was, this was a pleasant change to an otherwise often arduous process. It's even nice to think how thoughtful they are for proposing gastronomic break to celebrate a renewal or to give those whose process takes a little longer more energy.
That, actually, in and of itself is a rather Dubai-esque experience. I have found that in my nearly three months here: introductions to anything, whether it be a restaurant, an administrative building, or a business venture, with great positivity and hospitality (something familiar from my American upbringing) and yet after a bit of time lapsing, you find things actually happen in a more European/Roman descended/ Mediterranean kind of way and pan out in a much slower way. Maybe there are a few false starts (I hate to give a kind of #firstworldproblems kind of example, but it took one place five times, I kid you not, to get my business cards right), but add the back and forth, the (in my case) lack of a car and staunch refusal to have one, the heat, and the fact that it seems that everyone always expects you to dress up as if you are going to a business meeting, despite being a booming and growing metropolis, Dubai also has this small town kind of rhythm. So voilà my excuse for taking so long with this one.
I also must admit that I am getting used to life here, so experiences I am having that may have seemed unusual and share-worthy in the beginning are slowly becoming banal and thus I have less of a desire to put them up here as after a few minutes of thought, I usually end up saying to myself "who would want to read about that?" There is also the added complication that while I have had certain experiences that at the time I thought were, and still do consider to be, something that would interest you faithful readers, I was not quite sure, nor am I still, if I could photograph such a scene.
Notably, when I went to the police station to have my visa status changed from tourist to worker, I had one such experience. First of all, the fact that I could even simply go to the police station to do so, and not have to leave the territory, is something that merits being discussed. As I mentioned on my post about the "visa run" to Oman, after 30 days on a tourist visa, visitors have to leave the country; these individuals can simply turn right back around and come back in, unlike in Europe or the US, usually with no questions asked. The same procedure goes for those who want to change their visa status from visitor to worker/ professional. The only exceptions to this rule are if your company (usually a gi-normous kind of corporation, firm, or whatever other kind of monstrosity for which I'd likely never work) is big enough to handle everything (indeed, one of the upsides) or if you hail from certain countries such as several in Europe or the United States, that exempt you from one last visa-run and give you the pleasure of a trip to the police station to change it there.
After going through very similar process for the past six years in France, jumping through kind of administrative hoop doesn't phase me. You want passport photos, I'll give you passport photos? What format? The weird American one? The deer-in-headlights French one? I'm also a pro at taking a ticket from one of those little machines and waiting...for hours. What I had never encountered before, however, are typing centers, fees and all the things that go along with it. While English is ubiquitous here, lest we forget that Arabic is after all the official language, so any such documentation needs to be translated at an official center called a typing center.
So, rather than going in with a huge long list of documents, a folder about the size of a suitcase (that of course the on call civil servant frowns at, and with his or her x-ray vision, tells you that you clearly don't have the right ones), getting a ticket (around number 95), glancing at the screen (who shows number 5), and waiting for hours before your fate for the next year is determined...in Dubai, you arrive, the crowds construction workers and other laborers renewing their visas (nationals of any country can renew within the UAE so long as they don't change their status) split in two as if my gender, age and passport were Moses splitting the Red Sea, and without even having to get a ticket, I can stroll right up to the counter and explain my situation, sans frowns and bureaucratic judgment. So far so good. The man behind the desk, clad in military garb, asks for some basic information about me, why I am here, to see my passport, etc. He nods with each response and types away at his computer. Since he seems to be functioning as both an information desk and a visa dispatcher, every few minutes he is interrupted by people asking for where counter X is or, what they should do to get their husband's, child's, nanny's or drivers (this is Dubai, afterall) visa.
We finally get through getting all of my information into the system and he writes down a number with his pen (very official, I think) in my passport. He explains that I need to take several documents (essentially everything he has typed up) to the typing center, where they will do so in Arabic and do something else official that I still fail to understand, pay the 700 dirham processing fee (about 190 dollars--still cheaper than a visa run) and come back to him with the receipt and the new documents. Fine, I think--this kind of back and forth is exactly what I had to do in France, so I felt comfortable doing it UAE style.
The typing center is located across from the police station. Like other administrative centers, I am thrilled that there is a female-only entrance (and thus female only line), which means I will be out of there even sooner than expected. I walk in and find myself towering over a young Indian woman getting a visa renewal for her entire family, and a filipino maid with her employer. As those two women were waiting (no numbers or screens here, just waiting) for their requests to be effectuated, I had the man at the counter my documents and start to explain my situation. Before I can even finish, he interrupts me with a, "yes ma'am" and asks me to pay 800 Dirham. I ask about the price difference and he explains that the 700 AED is for the government, whereas the 100 AED is for the typing center (even though this is a government issued typing center...). I gave him several bills which to me still feel like Monopoly money because of their high number and color, as well, though more reluctantly so, my passport. I admittedly was slightly nervous to do so because I could see that once customers bequeathed their documents and precious national identification to the receptionist, there was no special order or organisation. The men simply just put them on a table in the center of the L-shaped room (the horizontal part being reserved for women, the vertical for men) from which typers on the other side would pick up random piles of passports and papers (not at all on a first-come-first-serve basis) and complete the necessary task). So, pay the extra price? Fine. Relinquish one's only form of legitimate identity for who knows how long? Ok. Both of those actually seemed reasonable to me, a seasoned-visa requestor.
What surprised me, and what has been the build up of this entire (likely boring up to this point) entry, is the fact that only once I was finally able to just wait a few minutes while my renewal was being typed up, I began to notice a familiar smell that I had not experience in several months: swiveling kebab meat. I glanced in the direction of this odor,and sure enough in the VERY SAME establishment, there was a full on donor kebab stand (it was indeed indoor, but saying restaurant seems far too fancy for this kind of place)--for those of you that know Paris, imagine those in the quagmire of streets at St. Michel. Yes, of all the strange things I have encountered throughout my ex-pat life, this is probably the most peculiar. A kebab while waiting to get your visa request typed up? I began to ask myself questions like, if the typing center is government run, is the kebab stand, too? Or do civil servants get some kind of a discount? I suppose these are the questions that come to mind when you are trying to wrap you head around the little idiosyncrasies of different countries. I so badly wanted to take a picture, but then another question popped into my mind: as a government building, at least the typing center part, did I have the right to do so? Let alone, how would it look for a pale, white Western woman to take pictures of a room mostly populated by men from the UAE, India and Pakistan...and at a kebab stand. I opted not to.
A man walked into the ladies entrance, and my Indian and Filipino neighbors promptly shooed him away, interrupting my kebab-why-and-how thought process. Fortunately, my passport was one of the lucky ones to not be buried by a plethora of other requests and my official English/Arabic extension request was completed.
As I walked back towards the police station to finalize the renewal, I read on the paper that I was an unmarried, Christian who went to university. Yes, true, but none of these questions were the ones that the original visa agent asked me. Assumptions like this, however correct, also don't surprise me after a few months in Dubai. They like to put people into categories here.
I gave the final documents to the same visa agent as before who was already attending to someone, but like the little interruptions he did onto me when I had been there earlier that morning, he stopped everything with his new client to finalize my request. He took all of my documents and my reciept of payment (which he confirmed was indeed 800 AED and not 700) and put them on a table behind him that was even less organized than the one in the typing center. I thought to myself how the civil servants in France that handed my visas over the years would react to this: no multicolored folders with different degrees of thickness to classify everything? No passport photo and proof of housing with every document? Quelle horreur. He finally printed a new document saying that my visa was extended for another month--this relieved me as those random numbers written by ball-point pen before didn't really reassure me--and I was free to go.
As much as I grew to love the visa renewal olympics in Europe, and as great as the Oman run was, this was a pleasant change to an otherwise often arduous process. It's even nice to think how thoughtful they are for proposing gastronomic break to celebrate a renewal or to give those whose process takes a little longer more energy.
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